ther ways to help on the business of killing,
hardly any have laboured in real love of war. Ironical, indeed, that
perhaps the most beautiful poem written these four years, Julian
Grenfell's 'Into Battle!' was in heartfelt praise of fighting! But if
one could gather the deep curses breathed by man and woman upon war
since the first bugle was blown, the dirge of them could not be
contained in the air which wraps this earth.

And yet the 'green hill,' where dwell beauty and kindliness, is still
far away. Will it ever be nearer? Men have fought even on this green
hill where I am lying. By the rampart markings on its chalk and grass,
it has surely served for an encampment. The beauty of day and night, the
lark's song, the sweet-scented growing things, the rapture of health,
and of pure air, the majesty of the stars, and the gladness of
sunlight, of song and dance and simple friendliness, have never been
enough for men. We crave our turbulent fate. Can wars, then, ever cease?
Look in men's faces, read their writings, and beneath masks and
hypocrisies note the restless creeping of the tiger spirit! There has
never been anything to prevent the millennium except the nature of the
human being. There are not enough lovers of beauty among men. It all
comes back to that. Not enough who want the green hill far away--who
naturally hate disharmony, and the greed, ugliness, restlessness,
cruelty, which are its parents and its children.

Will there ever be more lovers of beauty in proportion to those who are
indifferent to beauty? Who shall answer that question? Yet on the answer
depends peace. Men may have a mint of sterling qualities--be vigorous,
adventurous, brave, upright, and self-sacrificing; be preachers and
teachers; keen, cool-headed, just, industrious--if they have not the
love of beauty, they will still be making wars. Man is a fighting
animal, with sense of the ridiculous enough to know that he is a fool to
fight, but not sense of the sublime enough to stop him. Ah, well! we
have peace!

It is happiness greater than I have known for four years and four
months, to lie here and let that thought go on its wings, quiet and free
as the wind stealing soft from the sea, and blessed as the sunlight on
this green hill.

1918.

_PART II_

OF PEACE-TIME

I

SPINDLEBERRIES

The celebrated painter Scudamore--whose studies of Nature had been hung
on the line for so many years that he had forgotten the days